A non-exclusive application of such a separator lies in producing petroleum. In this application, of particular interest to the inventors, and without this being considered as limiting, the separator is placed for example in an oil well. It receives a fluid comprising water and oil coming from a producing reservoir, and it extracts therefrom oil having a reduced water content. The water separated from the extracted oil is reinjected into a level of the reservoir, possibly a level different from that of the producing reservoir, without any need for it to be separated or processed in a surface installation. A variant is to separate the fluids in the well and to raise both of them to the surface.
A separator of the invention can be used in a variety of other known applications for apparatuses of this kind, for example to de-dust gas.
Cyclonic flow conditions in a chamber for separating the components of a fluid are particularly effective for separating the components by weight. At the outlet from the cyclonic flow separator chamber, the heavier components are recovered from a radial position that is further from the center than the lighter components. In an ideal cyclonic flow, the tangential speed of the particles in the fluid medium increases in application of a hyperbolic relationship ongoing from the periphery of the chamber to a radius where it reaches a maximum value, and then decreases between said radius and the center of the chamber in application of a linear relationship. In particular, it is zero at the center of the separator chamber. In the hyperbolic zone, this subjects the particles of the fluid medium to radial accelerations that are inversely proportional to the cube of the radius.
Document FR-A-2 592 324 describes a separator for heterogeneous liquids, the separator having a cylindrical separator chamber and an axial impeller that rotate together about their common axis. The impeller has a core about which guide channels bring a fluid medium into the chamber in order to generate a cyclonic flow therein. Compared with static separators, such rotating separators have the advantage of reducing friction due to the differences in speed between the walls of the chamber and the injected medium, which friction can disturb the cyclonic conditions.
In practice, cyclonic flow conditions are difficult to achieve over the length of the chamber.